Ahhhh apple pie, baked beans, fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, a red, white, and blue food-colored cake – it’s as American as…well heart disease. Throw in some 2 liter sodas and Doritos and it’s a spread familiar to all of us that dominates many family and community gatherings.
With an average of over 610,000 people dying every year of heart disease, the mortality rate rising for middle-aged Americans, childhood obesity being a national epidemic, and the increased prevalence of childhood cancer – when will we begin to ask ‘why?’ When will this food-related health crisis be at the forefront of our concerns?
Virtually all of our country’s health issues are due to what we are eating. – Dr. Doug Woodford, MD of Full Life Wellness Center and Women’s Care located in North Alabama.
Woodford continues, “If you go back 200 years people died of tuberculosis or some type of infection, now people die of heart disease, diabetes, stroke, hypertension.”
In 1900 Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) accounted for approximately 9% of all deaths, by 1950 it accounted for 48% of deaths in the US. Known as the father of cardiology Dr. Paul Dudley White wrote, “When I graduated from medical school in 1911, I had never heard of coronary thrombosis [heart attack].”
“We have to begin to think of modern man not as sick, but poisoned,” says Woodford. “Most of us are ingesting four poisons daily, referred to as poisons because they are in fact toxic to our bodies. The 4 poisons are sugar, trans fats and vegetable oils, acellular carbohydrates, and alcohol. We all know about alcohol, it is regulated and most of us watch how much we consume of it.”
So what happened in the early 1900s that changed the way we eat? “Trans fats in the form of Crisco and corn oil hit the market in 1911 and 1907, and the biggest change is we became very good at refining sugar,” Woodford states. “And whether you are talking about high fructose corn syrup or agave syrup, all sugars are a combination of fructose and glucose. Glucose is what your body can burn for energy and fructose is a toxic poison. It is a slow acting liver toxin. The way it contributes to virtually all modern diseases is that fructose is metabolized in your liver to small dense LDL cholesterol which causes disease and damages your liver. It causes insulin resistance in your liver which causes diabetes, obesity, hypertension, and the inflammation that leads to heart disease and stroke. It also destroys your body’s natural mechanism to regulate your weight.”
Woodford believes that obesity and these food-related diseases are all symptoms of a problem and that problem is the consumption of sugar. “Currently 80% of our food supply contains sugar and that is the real problem,” Woodford says in a very concerned voice. “It is more addictive than cocaine.”
People are fed by the food industry which pays no attention to health and are treated by the health industry which pays no attention to food. – Wendell Berry, American novelist, naturalist, farmer, and environmentalist
According to a 2013 Credit Suisse Report entitled Sugar Consumption At A Crossroads, we spend over $1 trillion dollars on health care related to sugar. You can read the entire report here, it is quite informative and worth the time.
And since the costs of health care are built into the price of every American-built product and service. And since the per capita cost of health care in the U.S. is higher than in any nation in the world. If the U.S. can reduce the costs of health care over the long term—by preventing diseases that require costly medical procedures to treat and by making our existing health systems more efficient—the costs of American products can become more competitive in a global marketplace. – Harvard University
Wait what? Yes, as we insist on crunching on Cheetos, slurping soda, and eating what should be called ‘dessert’ for breakfast, not only does our blatant ignorance and ‘I’m gonna eat what I wanna eat attitude’ effect everyone’s cost of health care, it directly effects the cost of American made goods that could be more competitive in our world economy.
Food undergoes the equivalent of a leveraged recapitalization designed to suit the financial goals of its creator. Consumption of junk food (for example a Twinkie or a sugary drink) is akin to a financial exchange where short-term gains are privatized and long-term costs are socialized in the form of horrific health outcomes. The metabolic donkeys – consumers – pay relatively little money and turn a blind eye to the health consequences of their food choices – instead hoisting the fantastic profits of processed food companies and opting for a shortened, diseased life. – Simons Chase, Financial Expert And Author of Intersection of Food, Tech, and Health
If we want a healthier future for ourselves and our children we must begin to look at disease as preventative instead of reactionary, which starts with our food.
To think about food you have to think about your body as an ecosystem. If you take away or add one little organism in the ecosystem, think about all the side effects that causes. Food is the same way. – Dr. Doug Woodford.
What will you eat today? It is arguably the most important decision you will make today. Food is by far the most important thing we put in our body, it sustains us and nourishes us, it makes us stronger or weaker, it makes us healthy or sick. We have got to start realizing this process of input and output. If we eat too much sugar or too many chemically processed foods, our bodies will not receive the nutrients they need to survive in a healthy way. Therefore we will get sick- maybe it will be heart disease, may it will be chronic join pain, maybe it will be digestive problems, maybe it will be constant fatigue, maybe it will be obesity, maybe it will be mental illness.
“We’re training an ignorance because doctors are not taught in medical school that diseases can be caused by nutrition,” says Woodford.
Doctors are not in the food business, they are in the illness business, so you will likely never hear a doctor prescribe you 2 kale smoothies, 1 carrot, 2 poached eggs, and green tea. They asses your illness and give you a pill. You may never hear that the cause of death was ‘bad food’, but if food is what we put in our body more than anything else it will by far have the greatest effect on our lives.
Good nutrition is our best defense against chronic disease. – Weston Price Foundation
So how can we begin to change the way we eat? We can start by stopping our excessive sugar intake. We can start by stopping our purchases of chemically processed food. We should be eating real food with ingredients that we can pronounce and with ingredients that we know. It is impossible to try to replace natural nutrients we get from sustainably grown vegetables and animals with ones produced in a laboratory, it does not work and our deteriorating health is proof.
With childhood leukemia at epidemic proportions, unprecedented obesity, Type II Diabetes, and more than half the population on drugs don’t you think it might be worth testing another option besides government-sanctioned industrial sterility? Could it be that government-approved food is killing us? I guess as long as it’s slow enough to give us enough time to buy pharmaceuticals, that’s a good thing. – Joel Salatin, Author, Farmer, and Food Advocate
Visit your farmers’ market, buy from farmers, grow your own food, and buy organic. The key is to know your food – know where it came from, know how it was grown. And when you hear that little voice pop up and say, “But real food can be expensive…ask yourself how expensive is lifelong chronic illness?”
We must also teach our children about smart food choices. Dr. Woodford believes it starts at home, “Teach your child to avoid refined sugar and the health consequences it may cause. Teach them about real food. Cook at home.” Woodford continues, “Have your family avoid chemically processed foods – the food companies put chemical flavorings in their products so that your child will crave those Doritos, Cheetos, Capri Sun. They do not care about your family’s health, they simply want to sell product.”
The food industry has made sugar into a diet staple because they know when they do, you buy more. This is their hook. If some unscrupulous cereal manufacturer went out and laced your breakfast cereal with morphine to get you to buy more, what would you think of that? They do it with sugar instead. -World renowned researcher Dr. Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of California and author of the book Fat Chance: The Hidden Truth About Sugar
And what can we do in our schools? As any parent knows at many schools there is a revolving door of sweets. It’s a child’s birthday bring in the cupcakes with bright pink icing! It’s St. Patty’s Day here comes a tray of green cookies! They made their Reading goal let’s celebrate with cotton candy! It’s National Jelly Bean Day so guess what…! “Parents should pack their child’s lunch, bring fresh fruit on birthdays, talk with teachers and school administrators – it takes concerned parents to make change happen,” Woodford candidly continues, “Fructose is basically like alcohol to the brain, would you bring Jack Daniels to school for the kids to celebrate with? So why would you bring sugar?”
Star Tyner, an attorney and mother of an 8 year old formerly in the Alabama school system now attending school in Manhattan, says, “Our school in New York allows no sugar, so soda, no candy, not even at Halloween or Valentine’s Day, and seeing how it effects students’ ability to learn I would have a real problem if it was allowed.” Not only do 98% of doctors believe that sugar is the cause of our obesity (according to the 2013 study by Credit Suisse), but also the negative effects sugar has on a child’s brain and attention span are universally known.
Ariana Kanwit Principal of PAVE Southeast Raleigh Charter School insists good health is key to success, “It’s crucial for our students to start their day with healthy food, especially protein. When we allow our children to start their day with sugary cereal washed down with chocolate milk, we are setting them up for failure. When our students are pumped with sugar, we see more distracted behaviors, more meltdowns, and significantly decreased student achievement. If we expect our students to perform at high levels we must ensure they are well nourished.”
Lastly, you should think about going to a doctor who believes in integrative medicine, i.e. looking at your diet, exercise, body, mind, and lifestyle to determine how to treat your overall health, not a doctor who only treats illness. Integrative medicine is touted in major educational institutions like Harvard, Vanderbilt, Duke, Georgetown, USC and renowned doctors can be found in cities throughout the country.